Nothing symbolises Benjamin Mendy’s fall from grace quite like the sight of him pushing a trolley around his local supermarket.
Not so long ago the former Manchester City star was the world’s most expensive defender and employed staff and hangers-on who pandered to his every whim. Buying groceries himself was inconceivable.
In Mendy, who earned £500,000 a month in English football, the popular notion of the Premier League pampered princeling was writ large.
‘Now he queues up at the checkout just like the rest of us,’ says a neighbour in the small Polish city of Szczecin where the 31-year-old footballer lives. ‘I did a double take when I saw him ahead of me. I noticed he was buying a lot of chocolate bars.’
While many of his former team-mates still enjoy superstar status, Mendy, who won the 2018 World Cup with France, gets by on £10,000 a month playing for Pogon Szczecin in Poland’s top division, the Ekstraklasa.
A tidy sum for most of us but scarcely enough to keep the Frenchman in designer footwear. And as he told a friend, it is less than what some non-League players receive in England.
Five years ago, Mendy’s gilded life was upended by allegations of sex attacks during parties at his £4.8million mansion in the Cheshire village of Mottram St Andrew.
Accused of turning the pursuit of women for sex into a game, he faced two trials before being cleared of eight counts of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault in July 2023.
Five years ago, Benjamin Mendy’s gilded life was upended by allegations of sex attacks during parties at his £4.8million mansion in the Cheshire village of Mottram St Andrew
The former Manchester City star now gets by on £10,000 a month playing for Pogon Szczecin in Poland ’s top division, the Ekstraklasa
In the dock he wept with relief and, as he left Chester Crown Court, expressed hope of rebuilding his career. Privately, he feared for the future.
Such was the unedifying nature of many of the revelations about his reckless private life – including a boast that he had slept with 10,000 women – salvaging what remained of his career was by no means guaranteed. Even his own barrister had called his behaviour ‘morally dubious’ and ‘callous’.
It didn’t help when Manchester City, arguing that he was partly to blame for bringing his troubles upon himself, washed their hands of him. Thereafter Mendy, who hadn’t played a game in two years, became something of a footballing nomad.
First he signed for Lorient in France, provoking an immediate backlash from feminist groups and fans who, ignoring the fact that he was acquitted, unfurled banners in the stadium, the Stade du Moustoir, proclaiming: ‘No rapists in our stadiums’ and ‘Let the world of football clean up their ranks’.
Given this welcome it surprised no one when he played just 15 times before seeking new pastures. Perhaps Switzerland, he mused, with its reputation for cool neutrality, could offer a haven? In any case, he was innocent. He told friends that he shouldn’t have to worry what people thought.
But he faced a similar reaction when he joined FC Zurich, with a women’s charity accusing the club of contributing to ‘rape culture’.
He made just eight appearances before leaving by mutual agreement five months later.
Just when it seemed his European options were running out, last summer he washed up in the historic Central European region of Pomerania near Poland’s Baltic coast. Fans of his new club have taken to calling him the Pride of Pomerania. But they do so half in jest. For in truth, he has thus far given them precious little to be proud about.
Beset by injury and a lack of fitness and form, he’s hardly played and is instead used by the club as a kind of marketing tool.
Still, despite the lack of on-pitch action, his spell in Poland appears to have done him good. In many ways, as his friends tell the Daily Mail today, he’s a new man. And by all accounts a humbler one.
‘The young players are in awe of him because of the World Cup and he always finds time to help them and ask how they’re doing,’ said one. ‘He’s never arrogant, just always friendly and down to earth. He never plays the big man.’
Certainly, life is markedly less hectic than in the days when the Manchester in-crowd flocked to the notorious parties he threw at his mansion, The Spinney, whose rustic-sounding name struck some as inappropriate given what a court heard went on beyond its gates.
Sometimes the revelry was still in full swing when, having left in the morning for training, Mendy returned home in the evening. He seemed to keep an open house. If his guests wanted for anything – breakfast, for instance – his personal chef was on hand to rustle something up.
Pity his poor cleaner, though, who faced the post-party carnage. ‘Catastrophe,’ she once replied when asked to describe what she encountered, adding that there was broken glass, bottles and food scattered everywhere. Not to mention young women ‘wandering around trying to find their handbags’.
During the course of the two trials, jurors were presented with a lurid account of the off-pitch antics of some of the most famous and well-remunerated young men in the world. Mendy’s largesse was notorious among his Manchester City teammates. If there was a party to be had on a weekend, it was likely to be held at his gaudy mansion.
Mendy’s life is markedly less hectic now than in the days when the Manchester in-crowd flocked to the notorious parties he threw at his mansion, The Spinney
During the course of the two trials, jurors were presented with a lurid account of the off-pitch antics of top footballers (pictured: Mendy arriving at court in August 2022)
England stars including Jack Grealish were among those to pass through its electric gates and up the tree-lined drive in pursuit of a good time. So too did dozens of women, some as young as 17 and many of whom hardly knew the host – if at all – but were enticed by the prospect of meeting stars.
The case began with the prosecution giving the jury a video tour of his mansion. In it, a yellow Lamborghini could be seen parked among numerous cars in the driveway. Taken on a police officer’s body camera, the film took the jury down into the basement, to a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, sauna and gym. Paintings of Mendy and graphics bearing his name lined the walls.
The portrait that emerged from the trials was of a footballer drunk on his own wealth and celebrity. Born in Longjumeau, 11 miles south west of Paris, Mendy grew up in nearby Palaiseau and lived in an apartment on the ground floor of a modern four-storey building with his parents, originally from the Ivory Coast.
His father, who worked in a supermarket, died in 2020. ‘He was a big football fan and was thrilled when Ben turned professional aged 17,’ says a friend.
At Mendy’s trial, his brother revealed how the footballer had been ‘deeply affected’ by his father’s death.
Mendy’s career began with Le Havre. He then played for Marseille before signing for Monaco in 2016. Then came another seismic loss. His mother’s death in 2016 from cancer was said to have left him ‘devastated’ and ‘rudderless’. He was 22 at the time and left France for England a year later, joining Manchester City from Monaco in a £52million deal.
It is easy to see how the loss of his parents combined with instant wealth and fame contributed to his off-pitch antics. For the first time in his life he was living alone. Perhaps, said one friend from his schooldays, he threw ‘lavish parties because he didn’t want to be alone’.
Mendy told the jury during his trial that he knew women were mostly interested in him because he was a famous footballer. He had had a taste of the attention during his early years at Monaco, but when he joined Manchester City, he said, the attention became ‘ten times more’. He said: ‘The way they came to me, it’s not because of my look, it’s because of football.’
Asked about his attitude to having sex with women he did not know particularly well, he said: ‘At the time I was not thinking like how they were feeling or they can be upset because, for me, if they wanted to have sex and I wanted to, everything was fine and I would carry on my partying.’
During his trial both sides agreed that sexual activity had taken place. The question was: did the women consent?
Eleanor Laws KC, defending Mendy, sought to persuade the jury that while her client had made ‘monumental mistakes’ and behaved in a ‘callous’ fashion, this was not a ‘court of morals’.
She argued that even though none of the sex took place in loving relationships – and she herself wouldn’t want her daughter to attend one of Mendy’s parties – that didn’t make him a rapist.
It emerged that some of the women whom Mendy was cleared of raping sent messages to friends expressing what Laws described as ‘unbridled joy and giddiness’ about the night they’d just had.
In Poland, Mendy appears to have put his hard partying days behind him – and even seems determined to burnish his damaged public image with good deeds
The defence also suggested that some of the women deliberately went out to meet footballers, ‘hoping for a sprinkle of stardust’.
One of Mendy’s accusers, identified in court as Woman 5, returned to his home 15 times after he allegedly attacked her, the court heard.
Another accuser, Woman 4, was seen hugging Mendy at a Manchester nightclub, Chinawhite, the night after he was said to have raped her in his cinema room. The jury was shown CCTV footage of her approaching the footballer and dancing suggestively into him.
The defence focused particularly on a clip showing the woman posing for a photograph, apparently punching the air. The resulting photo was posted by a friend on social media. The caption read: ‘She s****** a pro footballer.’
Mendy spent 134 days in jail after breaching bail conditions following his arrest. And it was there, earning £4 a day, that he learned the value of money.
In Poland, Mendy appears to have put his hard partying days behind him.
Whether he has found romance in Szczecin, renowned for its beautiful 19th century architecture, is unclear.
Sources say he was recently spotted in a Warsaw restaurant after a match with a ‘woman who seemed to be his girlfriend’, joined by Mendy’s team-mate, former Leeds United midfielder Sam Greenwood.
Fiercely guarded about his private life, Mendy was – perhaps unsurprisingly – never publicly linked to anyone during his spell at Manchester City, though he has a six-year-old daughter from a brief relationship.
Court documents indicated that he had a serious girlfriend in 2022, though she was never named.
Michal Horbaczewski, a Polish sports journalist, says the footballer now seems determined to burnish his damaged public image with good deeds.
‘He is good at mentoring youth members of the club academy, and he also visits schools about twice a month,’ he says. ‘He is very popular, smiling with the kids, signing T-shirts, giving autographs etc.
‘The downside is he has hardly played since arriving here. And even when he does play it is only for a short time, perhaps ten or 15 minutes.
‘Generally people think of him positively though. He is very often seen down town and he is always happy to take selfies with people. Also people never really mention his past at all and all those allegations. There were no protests against him like there were in France.’
Patryk Jurys, a Szczecin-based football analyst, says he once saw Mendy graciously pose for pictures with young fans who spotted him in a supermarket.
‘He was fine with it,’ he says. ‘I don’t think he’s a loud person anymore. He just looks like a normal member of the club. He’s often used in marketing activities. He doesn’t play much, so the club uses him in different ways off the pitch.’
Having put his wild past behind him, now it seems his only indulgence is chocolate. He visits Lili cafe not far from his apartment in Hamza Tower, a city centre skyscraper, at least every other day.
‘Mendy is always here,’ says Artur, one of the waiters.
‘He loves sweet things – he only orders desserts mostly, hot chocolate cookies.
‘He comes in with a couple of other team members mainly, and then he always ends up being really generous and paying for all of them – whatever they order.
‘Everyone loves him here, and it is great to see him.
‘He calls me King Arthur which makes me laugh.
‘He is always friendly and happy if someone asks to take a photo with him. No-one talks about the problems in the past. We help him look forward.’
Not everyone is quite so supportive, however. Mendy honed his skills as a boy at the George Collet municipal sports complex in Palaiseau. After his success a sign was erected next to the pitch where he once played reading: ‘Terrain Benjamin Mendy’.
It was hastily removed after he was charged with rape – but was never put back despite his acquittal.
Additional reporting ROB HYDE
